BEST OF THE NET 2023; Essay in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2018;
(cited in BAE 2015, 2016, 2020, 2022); PUSHCART poetry finalist
By Ariane Dreyfus and Elaine Terranova
Translated from the French by Elaine Terranova from The Last Children’s Book (Le dernier livre des enfants) (untitled) I write because I am going to disappear. It was there, My little girl sitting in the stairway, I look at her between the rails Let’s not move I love just to go on It’s important… Read more »
By Marta Eloy Cichocka and Karen Kovacik
/ forecast / errors / image may contain palm trees sky clouds forecast errors image ocean open eye of a five-category hurricane may be twelve hours of a monstrous burgeoning storm contain winds of a hundred sixty miles an hour image spa glassy hotels tennis courts golf courses pools may be women crying in… Read more »
By Halyna Kruk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Halyna Kruk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Halyna Kruk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Xin Qiji and Bill Porter (Red Pine)
Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine (Bill Porter) This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Xin Qiji and Bill Porter (Red Pine)
Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine (Bill Porter) This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Xin Qiji and Bill Porter (Red Pine)
Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine (Bill Porter) This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Krystyna Dąbrowska
Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Krystyna Dąbrowska
Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Krystyna Dąbrowska
Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Meta Kušar
Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Meta Kušar
Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Meta Kušar
Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.
By René Char and Eliot Cardinaux
THE PRODIGAL’S TORCH The quarantined enclosure burned You cloud move ahead Cloud of resistance Cloud of caverns Towing hypnosis. ONGOING TRUTH The crevice’s inventor Tugs tumult’s rope We gauge the depth Along the riled contours of the thigh The quiet blood that releases Confuses the needles Raises love without reading it.… Read more »
By Hasan Atiya Al Nassar and Anna Aresi
Silence Silence will come to me the silence that enters the garments of the dead. The moment was poor (abandoned and wounded) and our skies were foreign. We will flee looking for a Revolution, howled the wind, and our last days screamed, wounded. * Alleyway I A tavern in an alleyway. Skinny Alessio… Read more »
By Miłosz Biedrzycki and Jennifer Croft
from: MLB, Sofostrofa i inne wiersze, Kraków 2007 MLB, Porumb, Poznań 2013 9 beers for ox-calling The castors on the chair bellow like a wounded bull, weevil. Except the hearing is more sensitive this Tuesday morning excessive as a peeking squirrel. I remember Erzsébet Bridge, women were shaving their pits there back at… Read more »
By Rainer Maria Rilke and Steven Cramer
These “departures” repurpose originals from Rilke’s New Poems (1907/08) both stylistically and thematically, compressing each stanza by a line’s-worth and using, wherever possible, active verbs instead of the adjectives and adverbs so profuse in Englished Rilke. Encounter The avenue’s green shadows clung to him like a dark coat he kept needing to adjust; while off… Read more »
By Dimitra Kotoula and Maria Nazos
Case Study I The light falls lower now— Shadows on the steep mountains The atmosphere calm as meek milk and the griping city flock trudges through nothing. Between reality and hope where the empty moment was revealed the mind spreads its images. Dividing distinguishing varying it struggles to see with its sugary muscles open… Read more »
By Jadwiga Malina and Joanna Banach
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Banach A Hunt at Water’s Edge Rushing browns. Ochres. Crimsons. Cinnabars falling to the ground. On vaults. On walls. In the fire. Scratching and wallowing. Down below some shrubs, a lake, or maybe a river. Taut backs of shadows. To be so close to the shimmer. At dusk.… Read more »
By Rainer Maria Rilke and Susanne Petermann
Translated from the French by Susanne Petermann Child at the Window A child watches out the window for his mother. The hour is endless….never before has he felt such aching in his soul. All these passing strangers, one the same as the next. It isn’t really their fault if they don’t measure up. His… Read more »
By Ilya Kutik and Reginald Gibbons
Translated from the Russian by Kutik and Reginald Gibbons. Prayer (Theme and Variations) If only I knew what new Keats Time has so intently fixed in its gaze, licking its lips with the tongue of its pendulum. Pendulum—sharp double-edged plait on the peruke of Time. Time!—in the reign of which Frederick or Paul did… Read more »
By Dzvinia Orlowsky
I’m delighted to interview Barbara Siegel Carlson and Ewa Chrusciel in celebration of their recently published new books, What Drifted Here and Yours, Purple Gallinule, respectively. In addition to being two poets I greatly admire, Carlson and Chrusciel are internationally respected translators as well as esteemed editors of Solstice’s Poetry in Translation. DO: Writing reveals… Read more »
By Elsa Cross and Susan Ayres
Translated from the Spanish by Susan Ayres This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Mirabai and Chloe Martinez
Translated from the Braj Bhasa by Chloe Martinez This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Yulia Berezhko-Kaminska
Translated from the Ukranian by Andrew Sheppard This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Olesya Mamchych and Christine Eliashevsky Chraibi
Translated from the Ukrainian by Christine Chraibi This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.
By Serhiy Zhadan, Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
Translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps *** You will never write about how it all really was. You won’t dare, you’ll keep it to yourself, put it aside, keep it in the dark. You’ll talk about literature, when you should talk about life, it’s life that rushes out into the… Read more »
By Jacques Viau Renaud and Ariel Francisco
Translated from the Spanish by Ariel Francisco Homeland Homeland from your starved latitude I felt my people rise through sonorous essences and heavy breaths. Homeland I felt how you grip through my blood squeezing my throat bruising my neck screaming along to my song. I witnessed your anguish from afar blooming in treetops erupting… Read more »
By Bożena Boba-Dyga, Kateryna Devdera and Ewa Chrusciel
Translated from the Polish by Ewa Chrusciel Leopolis semper fidelis Seemed like forever and ever Until Stalin stole it And now Putler bombs it You’ll see, you scum You will see Soot of Moscow, smoking ruins of your cities Polluted Forever cursed and dead There won’t be anybody left to rebuild When stone… Read more »
By Kateryna Devdera, Bożena Boba-Dyga and Ewa Chrusciel
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bożena Boba-Dyga and Ewa Chrusciel The biggest dream: to be with you all at Easter To gather for Easter. This Easter. Greetings, my family; what’s new, Mom? Mom is baking bread as always. My dear ones are all alive. My peace of mind quivers on a line. “My” dear… Read more »
By Mariangela Gualtieri and Cristina Viti
translated from the Italian by Cristina Viti Aidoios The word Αἰδοῖος is untranslatable. It is connected to the particular kind of respect due to an unfortunate person who is begging us… It is not to our credit that neither French nor, as far as I know, any other modern language has a word… Read more »
By Justyna Bargielska and Maria Jastrzębska
translated from the Polish by Maria Jastrzębska Bug There was only one and he died instantly. Someone had trodden on him on the first step, if you count from the bottom, or on the last if you count from the top. Something poured out of him as he lay there. My daughter asked if… Read more »
By RoodlyLaurore and Jerrice J. Baptiste
translated from the French by Jerrice J. Baptiste In the hollow of a dark and quiet mountain, where the wind stops blowing, leaves of the trees are silent birds don’t sing. You don’t even hear the sound of silence. It was midnight, the sky was overcast no moon, no stars a mysterious but… Read more »
By Małgorzata Lebda and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
translated from the Polish Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese fire: cleansing into the lid of a big jar father pours methylated spirits lets me set it on fire over the flame he singes the cold body of a duck heart or liver? he asks though he knows that mother will save the liver for me apparently thanks… Read more »
By Astrid Cabral and Alexis Levitin
translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin Obstacle Because of poetry beans burn milk spills one forgets to change clothes go inside out the baby cries in hunger one misses the train. But one goes on. Who knows to where, to what anonymous cloud. With the Word, the Poem Don’t put another music… Read more »
By Boris A. Novak
translated from the Slovene by the author from THE DOORS OF NO RETURN (fragments from the epos) Book One: MAPS OF NOSTALGIA Notebook One: THE ADDRESS Canto Two: THE ANCESTRAL TREE 1 … I was a reflection on the quick mirror of the water, and I was a shadow on the running window… Read more »
By Guillaume Apollinaire and Lynn Levin
Translated from the French by Lynn Levin The Mirabeau Bridge Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine And so our loves Must I recall again How joy always followed pain Come the night come the day The hours pass here I stay Your hands in my hands let’s linger face to face While underneath… Read more »
By Amir Or and Seth Michelson
from CHILD translated from the Hebrew by Seth Michelson Stricken A fallen angel always remembers height is depth, the wings – the fear; how his heart exfoliated leaf by leaf till left stark naked. An angel that fell from love to hope flaps its ghost wings in vain; parched and starved, his hands stretched… Read more »
By Giuseppe Ungaretti and Wally Swist
translated from Italian by Wally Swist from L’Allegria/Cheerfulness (Poems 1914-1919) Nostalgia When night fades just before the springtime and it is a rare person who passes Over Paris a dark color weeping thickens In a poem of a bridge I contemplate the incalculable silence of a slender girl Our afflictions merge together And how… Read more »
By Aleš Mustar and Manja Maksimovič
translated from Slovenian by Manja Maksimovič On the Charles Bridge instead of a passion play hordes of tourists with short-term memory loss unknowingly enact the role of refugees. There is no more space for genuine puppeteers. In souvenir shops the Good Soldier Švejk is rarely represented. He has been replaced by Hello Kitty. At… Read more »
By Wojciech Bonowicz and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese Second bell Hens are for the motherland ducks are against. And the dog is divided. For a moment he turns his bloodshot eyes to the sky. Then his gaze drops to the road again. In dust up to his armpits comes a toothless man who likes to tease.… Read more »
By Natalka Bilotserkivets, Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky
translated from Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky Bridge The air is as still and hot as my body. Arched like a bridge over a river. It’s so quiet—the nightingales must be drinking their own black alcohol. No sounds. Only color and shades spread out across the water. Face up—that’s how it… Read more »
By Ute von Funcke and Stuart Friebert
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from German by the author and Stuart Friebert
By Marcin Świetlicki and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
By Marcin Świetlicki and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
By Marcin Świetlicki and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
By Nguyen Quang Thieu and Bruce Weigl
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Vietnamese by Bruce Weigl
By Nguyen Quang Thieu and Bruce Weigl
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Vietnamese by Bruce Weigl
By Irene Bablé Marruffi
Translated from Spanish by Stephen Kessler The sky cut up by bars, cells of so many hopeless jails The rounded light of the ox’s eye and a sailor once more defying the storm. Sky bloody with senseless falling missiles, because of so many treasured hatreds. The most intense blue of a huge twilight under… Read more »
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